Welcome in...

Hello darlings,

You're receiving this because I like you: perhaps you live downstairs, perhaps we've made art together, perhaps we fell in love, perhaps you’ve known me since I was a baby, perhaps it's been far too long since we've spoken (in which case I miss you), or perhaps we still don't know each other too well (in which case I want to).

I've wanted to be writing a newsletter for a long time. I started reading (too?) many in the depths of the pandemic. They feel, often, like love letters from an artist—casual and personal, but simultaneously ambitious.

This is an invitation to subscribe to mine: Art Gardening.

After a thrilling but overwhelming bout of ideaphoria in April, I’ve been cultivating a practice I've called "art gardening." An art friend and I have been passing this metaphor back and forth. She is working on an album, me on all these assorted pieces of writing. She described a practice of “walking” around to each of her in-process songs and asking them what tending or nutrients they needed. That conversation unlocked this essay on artistic ecosystems, which I published in The Williams Project's newsletter.  I wrote:

In tending an “art garden,” I am interested in both how we as individual artists can nurture our gardens, but also how we can shift conditions collectively to support the art that needs to be made in this moment of rising fascism. And how do we care for each other—spiritually, creatively, materially—in the process?

Practically, this newsletter will include interviews with artists I’m stoked about, my practices for art gardening, recommendations for creative and political works that inspire me, and my own long(er)-form writing. The first two issues will be:

1. An interview with experimental composer Jackie An (in advance of their September 9th performance in Seattle).

2. A rundown of my favorite newsletters—the most ambitious and intimate.

I will also include a Google Calendar of art that excites me in Seattle. At the bottom of each newsletter, I will feature “nutrients”: a list of things that are nourishing me (or the artists I interview).

I hope, with this newsletter, I might whisper to you in your inbox—keeping you company on the train, in bed when you can't quite bear to wake up yet, or in a moment of pleasant procrastination. I hope it will help us stay in touch like pen pals. But most importantly, I hope it can be useful when your art and soul need tending.

With much love and excitement,

Jesse

Nutrients

This segment lists some things that are feeding me. This takes some inspiration from Ndeye Oumou Sylla’s “Pleasure Focused Routine.” I’ve been loosely writing down a weekly account of these prompts, adapting them as I go, for several months and it’s been a delight. I suspect it will be even more of a delight to share them with you.

This is also inspired by a professor who, when she saw me freaking out about graduating and building a “life in the arts,” gave me a simple prescription: go see one play each week. I’ve returned to this practice often in moments of artistic freakout. Sitting in a dark theatre roughly weekly is good for me, like a multivitamin, regardless of what appears before me.

Finally, “The Earth” feels important because I am not, in fact, a real-life gardener (my bestie downstairs neighbor is though.) It feels important to the integrity of this metaphor to deepen my connection to actual plants, to land, to seasons, and to elements. This is a place for me to chronicle this.

Art:

• The Disabled List comedy show at Northwest Film Forum (I’d never been to NWFF before and it’s so rad!)

• LIT: An Evening Giving Voice to Banned Texts at The Williams Project (where i work), in partnership with The Grocery Studios (a very very cool art space that I will be back to!)

• Public Works’ The Tempest at Seattle Rep

Earth:

• Sitting in an eerily circular grove of trees, on a cloudy day, in the arboretum, with an art friend, in person for the first time after a long Zoom friendship.

• This garden anthem, from the album Queer Love Songs, which might be the theme song for this newsletter. It is sensual-bordering-on-horny. If collegiate queer a capella groups haven’t gotten their hands on it, please help ensure that they do.

Reading and Wisdom

• Abolish the Family by Sophie Lewis

  • “I will hazard a definition of love: to love a person is to struggle for their autonomy as well as for their immersion in care, insofar such abundance is possible in a world choked by capital.” (In particular, I’m holding this definition alongside bell hooks’ definition: “The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”)

• “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” by Audre Lorde

  • Quoting her daughter: “…you’re never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there’s always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don’t speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside.”

Food:

• The $2 Tuesday tacos at my neighborhood dive bar while catching up with an art friend.

Rest:

• A rigorous practice of just lying down for ten minutes each day.

Fun:

• Floating on Lake Union

Embodiment:

• A green satin dress, bought at a thrift store for a wedding, that makes my enjoy the shape and curve of my shape. (And it reminds me of the green satin dress).

Sensation:

• Non-chemical bug spray that smells like fancy soap, while sitting on the porch at dusk with my neighbors, to keep the mosquitos from biting our ankles.

For Younger Me:

• A picnic in the park on Capitol Hill with very cool people. 16-year-old-me would be stoked.

Here is my Google Calendar for art I’m hoping to catch in Seattle. This is simply my chaotic way to keep track of art shit; I make no promises I will catch it all. If you’re around and wanna be my date lmk. Please feel free to also share things you’re excited about and I’ll add them.

If you want to learn more about my creative work and/or hire me for writing, dramaturgy, editing, communications, copywriting, tutoring, or teaching work, check out my (new) website.